Zygmunt Menkes, AKT, after 1950

51.2 x 41.5cm - oil, canvas signed p.d.: Menkes

On the frame a sticker of a New York gallery (print, pen): KRASNER GALLERY | 1061 MADISON AVE. RE 4-6110 | TITLE MODEL IN STUDIO | ARTIST ZIGMUNT MENKES | MEDIUM OIL RO-.



The nude on display is an excellent example of the very distinctive style that Sigmund Menkes developed after immigrating to the United States. The early years of his work - the 1920s and 1930s. - the artist spent in Paris, where he worked under the influence of the Fauvists and especially Henri Matisse. At that time his works were painted softly and characterized by dim colors. After moving to New York, both the color scheme and the expressiveness in the application of paint intensified. Menkes began to build compositions with spots, which he then surrounded with sweeping outlines. He limited his palette to blues, greens and browns, which he complemented with juicy yellows, reds and contrasted with black outlines. Figural compositions, portraits, nudes and still lifes became synthesized over time and the artist began to create on the verge of abstraction.

Sigmund Menkes said: I have always believed that only the harmony between the abstract values of plastic language and the inner and direct contact with life and nature (as well as a personal relationship to life) can only lead an artist to create a work of art. Without this harmony, only a laboratory experiment or a sentimental illustration is the result.

quoted in Sigmund Menkes 1896-1986, Lipert Gallery, New York 1993, p. 19.

In the featured Nude, the artist has also dynamized the static figure of a nude woman with sweeping black lines. Over time, the painter thickened the arrangement of lines more and more, enriching the texture of the canvases. The interior of the studio, filled with objects, which often served as a backdrop for Menkes' works, gave illusionary depth and added decorative qualities to the whole.



♣ A fee will be added to the auctioned price in addition to other costs, based on the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite).

Zygmunt Menkes (Lviv 1896 - Riverdale, New York 1986) began his study of painting under Kazimierz Sichulski at the Lviv School of Art Industry. Then, between 1919 and 1922, he studied under Wojciech Weiss at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. In 1922 he went to Berlin, where he met Alexander Archipenko and benefited from his guidance. Since 1923, he was permanently in Paris. Associated with the École de Paris circle of artists, he was friends with, among others, E. Zak and M. Chagall. He participated in the Autumn, Independent and Tuileries Salons, and exhibited in many Parisian galleries. He often traveled to Poland; he was a member of the New Generation grouping in Lviv and the Zwornik Association of Artists in Cracow, and participated in exhibitions in Lviv and Warsaw. He traveled extensively, including in 1928 he was in Berlin, and in 1935 in Spain (together with A. Nacht-Samborski). In 1935 he went to New York, where he settled permanently and where he had a solo exhibition in 1936. Over the years he worked with art galleries there and taught at the Art Students League. He painted portraits, nudes, figurative compositions, still lifes and landscapes, and after 1940 also paintings referring to the martyrdom of the Jews. His painting underwent various stylistic transformations. In the Paris period, his paintings were close to the currents of Expressionism and Fauvism. In the post-war period, he limited his colors, introduced a strong contour line, rich texture and, with time, an increasingly pronounced geometrization of forms.